"I daresay you will speak to him some time."
"Oh, yes. I am going in there to-night to dine with my German acquaintance."
Olive raised her eyebrows.
"Oh, yes, I know of what you are thinking. You are saying to yourself that I am false to my creed by dining with a stranger, in order to see a man who may have been a donkey-boy in Cairo; but if I have made you curious by talking about him, what must I be, who have seen him?"
"You have accepted the invitation of the German, then, in order to get an introduction to Signor Ricordo?"
"Exactly. I know I am not courteous to my German host, but it is the truth. Besides, to give your Home of Rest its due, they do things very well there."
"Thank you," said Olive, with a laugh. "I am always pleased when I give my customers satisfaction."
A little later Herbert Briarfield left Vale Linden and rode back to his home.
"How much she must have loved the fellow after all!" he said to himself. "It must be six years at least since he threw up the sponge, and yet she remains true to his memory. I cannot understand it. Of course one doesn't know all that happened; yet how could she give the fellow up because he was such a cur, and then refuse to marry any one else because he committed suicide?"
During the afternoon he rode out to see some off-farms, and then came back to dress for dinner. "What an idea to build such a place!" he said as the carriage rolled along. "Still, I suppose a wilful woman must have her way."